On the part of many the theory here provisionally adopted will be regarded with disfavour by reason of a disinclination to supposing any great recent changes of level in the continental areas. So firmly established do the continents appear to be, that it seems like invoking an inordinate display of power to have them exalted for the sake of producing a Glacial period. Due reflection, however, will make it evident that within certain limits the continents are exceedingly unstable, and that they have displayed this instability to as great an extent in recent geological times as they have done in any previous geological periods. When one reflects, also, upon the size of the earth, a continental elevation of 3,000 or 4,000 feet upon a globe whose diameter is more than 40,000,000 feet is an insignificant trifle. On a globe one foot in diameter it would be represented by a protuberance of barely one thousandth of an inch. A corresponding wrinkle upon a large apple would require a magnifying-glass for its detection. Moreover, the activity of existing volcanoes, the immense outflows of lava which have taken place in the later geological periods, together with the uniform increase of heat as we penetrate to deeper strata in the crust of the earth--all point to a condition of the earth's interior that would make the elevations of land which we have invoked for the production of the Glacial period easily credible. Physicists do not, indeed, now hold to the entire fluidity of the earth's interior, but rather to a solid centre, where gravity overcomes the expansive power of heat, and maintains solidity even when the heat is intense. But between the cooling crust of the earth's exterior and a central solid core there is now believed to be a film where the influences of heat and of the pressure of gravity are approximately balanced, and the space is occupied by a half-melted or viscous magma, capable of yielding to a slow pressure, and of moving in response to it from one portion of the enclosed space to another where the pressure is for any cause relieved.